Not only will you be able to listen to a varied mix of genres from nearly two dozen bands, but you will be invited to participate in this year's Ramble Music & Arts Fest, organizers say.
The free daylong music festival has expanded to run from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. July 5 at Jackson Square. The event has been adding arts-type happenings in the downtown area each year. This third annual event will include the return of Poetry in Motion, featuring local writers' musings, plus sidewalk art and Ramble On: A Tale of Genesee County.
Ramble On will be an original story, a work-in-progress completed by patrons from 1 to 4 p.m. at a table stationed outside Adam Miller Wheel Goods on Center Street. The Ramble posse, which includes Bill McDonald and Bill Pitcher, asked co-organizers Patty Hawley and Kirby Moore, of Genesee-Orleans Regional Arts Council, for help.
"They were looking for a way to get other aspects of art involved that could involve everybody," Moore said during a recent planning meeting at GO Art! Cultural Center. "People will get to see one line before them and add to it."
Batavia native Steven Huff will write the opening paragraph. Now a resident of Rochester, Huff is director of adult education and programming at Writers & Books literary center in Rochester. He also teaches creative writing at Rochester Institute of Technology and Eastman School of Music and has authored two collections of poems and a collection of stories. The Ramble is something Huff looks forward to. He's been given a deadline to have that paragraph done a few days before the event.
"I haven't had to do that since third grade," he joked. "I'll be there all day. I wouldn't miss the Ramble."
His lead-in for Ramble On will be published in a future edition of The Daily News. It will have something to do with the Genesee County area. The task will then be to write the next line. Most of the tale will be hidden from view, except for one preceding line, Moore said. And all of it will be anonymously written by Ramble visitors. The finished work, or excerpts from it, will again be published in The Daily News.
Down the street and around the corner will be another new attraction. Kids and adults will be invited to have a go at chalk art. Two sections along School Street will feature a "free draw" and an ongoing theme artwork. Local artist Karen Reisdorf and student Shanelle Abramowski will be overseeing the project.
"We'll have high quality, vivid-colored chalk," Reisdorf said. "It will be open to all ages. It's great for parents and kids to work together and do something they might not normally do."
Abramowski, an art history major at the University at Buffalo, envisions the event to be a nice collaborative effort.
"It's a good creative outlet for the whole community to do a creative endeavor together," she said.
The final work will be photographed and displayed downtown. As for the sidewalk edition, it will last at least until the first rain, Reisdorf said.
In addition to those artistic happenings, there will, of course be music. So much, in fact, that organizers had to go with two stages this year, McDonald and Pitcher said. There will be the main stage at Jackson Square and a second one set up at the School Street parking lot. Visitors can listen to one group and then walk over to see another band at site number two. It will offer opportunity for plenty of toe-tapping, dancing and, hopefully, a new concept, McDonald said.
"It's called share your chair. If everyone brings a chair and sets it up at either stage, then they can leave it there for someone to borrow while everyone changes from one stage to the other."
The music will begin one hour earlier than last year and continue three hours beyond last year's cut-off. Band members will be traveling from across the country, including Massachusetts, Florida, Texas and California, McDonald said. Groups include B Side Drive, Cheer Daddies, Clayton's Korn Tribute, Craig Snyder Fusion, Dizzy, Ghost Riders, Julius Kay and the Maytags, Orleans County Collective, OSHA, Penny Whiskey, Prairie Reign, Prospect, Red Creek, Red Hot Trio, Red Letters, Rock-A-Bully's, Sierra, Trailer Jam, Tres Cool, Trolls, Warren Skye Band and Westside Blues Band.
There will be a third stage for some type of acoustic performance, he said, to include "spoken word, or whatever creative magician, juggler, mime, dancer or hip hopper can show up."
"We will have (three to five) sandwich boards placed in high profile areas to let Ramblers know times, what and where events will be taking place," McDonald said. "There will be a remembrance of names service for a few minutes of all past musicians -- we've worked to research -- and artists."
And visitors won't go hungry, with assorted food vendors selling food and drink throughout the day, he said.